Footballers and Conductors: Between Reclusiveness and Conviviality

Abstract

The chapter engages with two cases, firstly a footballer taking part in a UK testimonial of white versus black footballers in 1979. The event was depicted in a 2016 documentary which leads into a discussion of postcolonial Britain at a time where football, music and politics are in intense relation. The second case addresses the life of a to-be conductor in 1905 taken from the West Indies and caved as a human exhibit for a Tivoli colonial festival in Denmark. He eventually managed to stay in the country and late in life also initiated a nurse’s choir. The discussion of the cases evolves around the notions of reclusive openness as well as opacity and the convivial politics and representations the subjects were caught in.